Ch 16: Information
AN: Just saw the Flashpoint Paradox. It was awesome. Until I realized (didn't read Flashpoint, so I didn't know this until now) that it's Barry's fault Wally doesn't exist anymore. He killed his own nephew and said nephew's kids, and he doesn't even remember it. *Cries*
Anyways, KALDUR WAS IN IT, AND HE WAS AWESOME! And seriously, could they have used any more models straight form Young Justice? Kaldur, Garth, Tula, that Reporter that is totally a pallet-swapped Cat Grant…. Yeah. Moving on….
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The ride to the Batcave is silent.
Not for lack of trying on Dick's part, of course. It's just that he hasn't met a Batman this reticent since Bruce had laryngitis back in his first year at the Manor. So it is that the seventeen minutes between being teleported to the Batmobile's location and actually pulling into the cave are some of the most awkward in the young acrobat's life.
It makes him sad.
He noticed it, a little, when he and Bruce had come here to help Artemis when she was first getting settled. The empty cave, the heightened paranoia, the solemnity in this other-Batman's eyes... it was clear that Bruce was the sole member of this world's Bat Clan. His assumption that this Bruce was at least still close to the League was summarily shattered by the man's actions this evening.
Oh, they cared for him, that much was obvious. It was the lack of reciprocation that baffled Dick. His Bruce has always had a (grudging) soft spot for most of the League, particularly for Dick's Uncle Clark. Several members he outright respected, among them Black Canary and Wonder Woman. This Bruce, however, didn't seem to have any compunction about blowing the lot of them off.
Wally will come first – he has to – but that doesn't mean Dick's not filing these thoughts into the back of his brain for when the Anomaly is taken care of. Whatever it is that has Batman so afraid of dropping his emotional walls – because Dick's sure he's reading it right; this man loves them even if he won't show it – Nightwing's confidant that he can overcome it.
Bruce pulls smoothly into one of the 'Cave's alcoves as their journey finishes. Dick opts not to comment on the fact that the security system recognized him as an ally rather than an intruder, or even a guest. The younger hero is promptly led to the Batcave's mainframe, and the Dark Knight gestures for him to do his thing. They're falling into what Dick's always called 'Detective Mode' now. Dick allows it. In this context, at least, Batman's recalcitrance is more understandable.
Nightwing takes Batman's place at the terminal, connecting his glove directly into the powerful computer. He flicks open his wrist computer, and with a few twitches of his fingers he's able to activate a rough holographic representation of the multiverse; a grid of small blue orbs. Another flick highlights a series of the orbs in red. The orb on one end is green; on other end it's gold. Seeing how many Earths are now labeled in red reminds Dick of the seriousness of the situation and gives him the strength to resist the urge to add a 'You are Here' tag to the gold-tinted earth.
"This is the best way we've come up with to approximate the multiverse in three-dimensional space. Each sphere represents an earth in a different dimension. The Team dedicated a lot of man-hours to investigating the hundreds of the dimensions 'closest' to ours." It was a tedious serious of stake-outs, but no one dared complain. Even those that had never known Wally knew how much this meant to the senior members of the Team.
"We came up with an algorithm to sort the dimensions based on where we believe the time stream deviated and how each dimension compares to its neighbors at the present point in time. This allowed us to create a grid of their relationships to one another. The green orb is where we believe the Anomaly first began its rampage. It's the site of the earliest chronological death of a Wally that we can't reasonably explain, at least."
And they tried so hard to explain it. Wally was just a kid in that universe. He wasn't a Flash – there wasn't a Flash in that dimension, just a Barry Allen – but a cameraman for his Aunt. He should have been safe. What are the odds that he'd just happen to stumble upon CitizenCold's secret villainy? That the 'hero' would just happen to catch him in his discover? Timmy, bless him, spent weeks recreating the events surround that Wally's murder, and concluded that something had to be pulling the strings; there were too many random variables for it to have coincided so nicely otherwise.
"That was about four years before Wally ceased in our universe."
Batman's equivalent of a shocked gasp is a slight tightening of his fist. The leather creaks loudly in the otherwise quiet cave as the elder Bat realizes how big this really is, how far the odds are stacked against them...
Dick swallows away the dryness in his throat and continues. "Chronologically, the Anomaly's path looks like this." A line connects the highlighted orbs, with dates attached. Most are short, connecting two adjacent earths. Towards the middle, though, the lines stretch, connecting earths that are further and further apart, even going straight through other earths. One line in particular jumbles the orderliness of it, jumping across several earths, only to immediately jump back to an earth that was adjacent to the previous one. The line continues through several more earths before re-intersecting the problem orb to reach the earth behind it. The twice-intersected earth is highlighted in purple.
"At first the Anomaly seems to meander. It takes its time in each universe, doesn't attack very aggressively, and seems willing to go after Wally whether he's active or retired, young or old. Around here," he gestures to an earth that's relatively close to the purple one, "it begins to move steadily closer to our dimension." He indicates the purple orb this time. "Notice how it spends significantly less time in each universe, even leaving Wally alive in some of them in its hurry, hence the lines that seem to go through some of these earths."
"It had a goal, a set endgame it was aiming for."
"That's what we think."
"And this crisscrossed line?"
"Remember, this isn't a perfect representation. We've been working under the assumption that it's a fault of our model that the algorithm breaks down near our own universe. Dr. Palmer thinks it's likely due to selective sampling." Dick thinks the algorithm is wrong, but who is he to argue with the mathematical genius? His Mathlete days are long behind him. "Either way, we haven't been able to improve upon it, and it seems accurate enough at a 'distance' from our home world that we just deal with it."
"What happens if you remove your own world from the timeline?"
Dick's fingers fly and his home world is removed from the sequence. Instantly, the line snaps into a semblance of a pattern. That area of the map is still subject to the occasional 'skipped' earth, but the crossed lines and doubling-back across several dimensions are gone. The implications of this are not ones Dick wants to deal with, so he tries to make a joke. The effort is weak.
"My scientific sensibilities are offended, Bats! I didn't know you were one to just toss out data that doesn't fit. I mean, it's an outlier, but it's still an Anomaly attack, and it might provide us with important clues into its M.O."
"Is it an Anomaly attack, though?"
"Of course it is! What else could set up conditions so perfectly to kill Wally?" He refuses to believe differently.
They had gotten rid of the Reach and the Light, and even most of Black Beetle's doomsday devices. They had won. Yet one device just happened to have been missed by Blue's initial scan? And it just happened to be in a stage where only speedsters could stop it? It also just happened to have an energy field that's too much for the faster speedsters and just happened to spew enough energy to disintegrate Wally? It had to have been the Anomaly. Wally isn't that unlucky. He doesn't deserve to be that unlucky.
"Except that Wally isn't dead."
"I- He's- But it's…" Dick searches for the words, the logic that he's been so secure in this whole time. Nothing comes.
He doesn't want to believe this. It had been so... convenient, to pinWally's death on some depraved conspiracy rather than declare him an unfortunate casualty in their seemingly-eternal struggle with the Light's greed. Because if it was the Anomaly's fault, then there was nothing they could do. If it was really a coincidence that Wally's sacrifice was needed… well. There are a thousand what if's that can plague his conscious – one for every mistake he can ever remember making – and any of them might have save his best friend.
It's probably not meant to be a kindness, but Dick appreciates it none the less when Bruce continues.
"So if we work under the assumption that the Anomaly isn't responsible for Wally's… relocation," the man presses, "what do we still know?"
Dick takes a deep breath. Anomaly or not, Wally's alive. They need to keep him that way.
"We know that the first 'skipped' earth is 18 before our own," the translucent earth in question fades to an even lighter pink. "Assuming that our Wally wasn't the Anomaly's victim, and that it may have skipped our earth only because Wally was already gone, then the last skipped earth is two before our own in this sequence."
"And the Anomaly begins moving at a statistically significant increase in rate four earths before the first skipped earth?" Batman clarifies.
"Yeah, although I need to re-run the numbers without our earth in the picture… huh." Dick glares at the new numbers at the bottom of the projections, his Mathlete's brain whirring at this new information. Batman finally says it out loud.
"Even without the strange jump, the Anomaly moves faster, on average, just before your home world than after it."
"…Yeah." Years of ingrained training have him sorting this information, isolating the facts and patterns they can use from all of this. He mentally ticks off the clues they have, sure that Batman's doing the same.
The Anomaly has some sort of goal, even if they don't understand yet. Otherwise, it wouldn't have such conspicuous patterns of boredom, eagerness, and… vindictiveness, for lack of a better term. This implies that it has a certain consciousness, as well as the ability to plan.
The thing is probably not responsible for Wally's original displacement, but it may have a special interest in destroying him, if the thing's new delay tactics are anything to go by. Wally's theory about being 'the one that got away' is reasonable enough to keep on the table.
The Anomaly is powerful enough to cross dimensions and take on the whole League if it wants, yet it's only using that power to kill off the same person, over and over. This suggests a certain pettiness and short-sidedness that might be able to be exploited. Dick wishes this were a less common trait amongst villains so that they might be able to draw clues from it.
"There were no other patterns between the universes? Besides the ones you used to sort the grid?"
Dick resists the urge to roll his eyes. His own Bruce knows his training, and would never imply that he missed something so obvious. This one doesn't though, so he plays along with the man's overly thorough methods.
"What do you want me to say, Bats? That the average entropy in each universe visited by the Anomaly is greater than those it skipped? Although, now that I've said that, you could make a case for the chaos that always seems to follow Wally's death…" He trails off at the older hero's stare. Okay, seriously. Someone needs to help this man feel the aster.
"What do you know about its physical capabilities?" Bruce has always been good about turning to the next route of inquiry when one runs into a temporary dead end, and at ignoring things he deems inanities. This Batman is obviously no different.
"Not as much as we thought, apparently." Dick dismisses the holographic model moves into the data files on the Anomaly's attacks. "Aside from its movement, there's no clear pattern in methods or circumstances of the attacks, and you have the same data as we do, so you know we were as surprised as you were that it could and would distract you guys from coming to Wally's aid."
"It's never interfered with a rescue before?"
"Well… not on this scale."
"Elaborate."
"I mean, it is trying to kill Wally, after all. Of course it has to separate him from his allies sometimes. We've lost more than one Wally because we got separated from our principal and weren't able to get back to him in time, or were too late to call each other for back up."
He tries not to think his worst failure. Wally has always run ahead. It's annoying, but not fatal… not usually. He should have kept up. He should have called his teammates sooner. He should have saved Wally.
"…You've never had trouble jumping dimensions to help each other? As long as the call is actually sent out?"
Dick has to think for a minute. "No. We've always been able to get to Wally if we receive the distress signal. We just usually lose once we're actually there."
"So what's the difference between your team's trans-dimensional technology and the League's teleportation and Zeta networks?"
"Well, one works within a single plane of existence, and one crosses between those planes." He's not trying to be cheeky; he knows this is serious. It's just habit.
"The Anomaly is capable of pulling accomplices from adjacent universes; it should have no trouble delaying you from making the same jump. If it knows you're coming."
Dick catches on to the man's meaning. "You think it can't track our TD tech the same way it tracks League teleportation tech."
"Exactly. What are the physical differences between the two?"
"Current League tech in most dimensions is of hybrid Kryptonian-Martian-Thanagarian make. It operates roughly along the same lines as the Zeta technology we use back home. Our TD tech is based on some more advanced New Genesis stuff, but it also has a magical component. Zatanna and Dr. Fate personally wove the spells that let us bridge between dimensions without risking trans-universal collapse."
The thought that they were using magic to try and save Wally always made him feel like smiling. Note to self, see how far Wally will go to try to explain our tech as pure science. Ensure video cameras have a clear view.
"So it could be the level of technology or a magical component that's throwing off the Anomaly's ability to detect it?"
"Or both." The man is pulling up his own files now – of course he's already been through these scenarios – changing and adding to various sections of his notes. Dick takes the opportunity to browse the man's suspect list. It's extensive, ranging from 'Alien Entity' to 'Circe' to 'Mythic Blob' Dick has never even heard of half of the actual villains on the list. The Time Trapper?* Seriously? Who the heck is that?
He begins adding his own notes to Batman's as they try to find their culprit, or, barring that, a strategy to deal with this menace. They're falling into a rhythm, into that easy pattern Dick had always had with Bruce, even at the beginning. It's comforting, in the face of all that's been going on. Because, yeah, they have Wally back, but he's starting to realize that just means they have so much more to lose.
He can't… he can't face that again. None of them can, really.
If they lose Wally now… he worries Artemis will go with him, whether by the Anomaly's hand or her own. M'gann won't cope well with losing Wally and her sister – again. Kaldur will withdraw into himself and stew in his own guilt like last time. Roy will probably stop visiting them again. Conner will try to hold everything together, but that's never been his strong suit. Dick is so tired of watching his family crumble around him. The little boy inside of him is crying; he just wants his Dad to tell him everything's going to be all right. He doesn't realize what he's saying until it's too late.
"We're going to save him this time, right Dad?"
He realizes his mistake as the word comes out of his mouth, but it's too late too take it back. Batman freezes, but doesn't turn around. Dick's heart hammers in his chest; pain and embarrassment and exhaustion all twist up inside of him.
Finally, Batman speaks again. "It's late, and we're reaching the end of our resources. I'll have Alfred make up a room for you, if you don't care to return to the Watchtower so late."
The man turns, and stalks off without another word. Dick's stuck trying to decide if he needs to apologize.
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*Thank MarkinOrlando for this name-drop. He reviews every chapter, and always has really interesting comic facts to share with me.